Jacques Jarry (17 October 1929 – 18 January 2023) was a French linguist and archeologist.

Biography

Born in

Niort Niort (; Poitevin: ''Niàu''; ; ) is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department, western France. It is the prefecture of Deux-Sèvres. The population of Niort is 58,707 (2017) and more than 177,000 people live in the urban area. Geography T ...

on 17 October 1929, Jarry attended secondary school in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

before entering the

École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

in 1949. After that, he became an honorary member of the ''Institut du Caire'' and practiced archeology in France, Egypt, and the Middle East. A linguist and interpreter, he was fluent in fifteen languages: Japanese, Korean, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, English, Arabic, Latin, ancient and modern Greek, and French. During the 1960s, Jarry lived in Lebanon, where he married and saw the birth of his first child, a daughter. In 1965, he went to Egypt and participated in archeological excavations. He was then sent to Nigeria and Japan, where he settled and started a new family. He returned to France in 1975 and obtained a teaching position at the Lycée de Melle. He participated in excavations with secondary school students, including along the Niort ring road. Jarry lived in France throughout the 1980s, where he carried out excavations along the

A10 autoroute The A10, also called L'Aquitaine, is an Autoroute in France, running for 549 km (341 mi) from the A6 south of Paris to the A630 at Bordeaux. It is the longest motorway in France. It generally parallels the N10 Route Nationale, but d ...

Deux-Sèvres Deux-Sèvres (, Poitevin-Saintongese: ''Deùs Saevres'') is a French department. ''Deux-Sèvres'' literally means "two Sèvres": the Sèvre Nantaise and the Sèvre Niortaise are two rivers which have their sources in the department. It had a ...

. During this era, he also spent time in Japan, where he worked as a professor and interpreter at

Hiroshima University is a Japanese national research university located in Higashihiroshima and Hiroshima, Japan. Established in 1929, it was chartered as a university in 1949 following the merge of a number of national educational institutions. Its abbreviated f ...

. He retired in 2009 and lived near Niort, where he wrote a book titled ''Inscriptions latines et étrangères du Poitou''. Throughout his career, his work on archeological excavations gained international renown. During his retirement, he examined the

Glozel artifacts The Glozel artifacts are a collection of over 3,000 Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, including forged clay tablets, sculptures and vases, some of which were inscribed, discovered from 1924 to 1930 in the vicinity of French hamlet of Gloze ...

and shed new light on their linguistics. He shared his findings at the science festival in Faye-l'Abbesse in 2009. Jarry died in

Vouillé, Deux-Sèvres Vouillé () is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department in western France. It sits about ten kilometers east from Niort on the banks of the Lambon, where that small river empties into the Sèvre Niortaise. Population See also *Communes of th ...

on 18 January 2023, at the age of 93.

Publications

*''Hérésies et factions dans l'empire byzantin du IVe au VIIe siècle'' (1968) *''Hannya Shinghyo - The most famous of the sutras in Japan'' (2013)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jarry, Jacques 1929 births 2023 deaths Linguists from France French archaeologists École Normale Supérieure alumni People from Niort